Friday, August 31, 2007

In Which I Fail the Amazonian Sisterhood By Being A Total Bitch...

Okay, still with me. Good. I'm going to second Ragnell's posts here and here.

Guys. Seriously. Chill. You're way too smart to get worked up like this over something so moronic.

Pfeifer did not "kill" Wonder Woman. It is not even remotely within Will Pfeifer's power to kill Wonder Woman. The franchise is older than dirt! It's very durable.

Okay, maybe not older than dirt, but it's at least older than pretty much any of us who are currently making a fuss all around. Even presuming that the crossover series does scare off all the prospective new Wonder Woman readers (huh), and this reboot dies, they'll reboot her again. She's a big name draw. She's one of the big three. The average person on the street knows her name and vaguely her powers.

Many of whom probably have twirled like Lynda Carter at least once in her life.

She'll be fine! Christ.

Besides, do you really think anyone reading Amazons Attack isn't already a Wonder Woman fan? I mean honestly, who would you THINK AA would be about? Batman? It's not the sort of widespread crossover where someone would be all "Oooh, Batman's in this? I LOVE Batman. Oooh, who's that?" It's Amazons. They're only significant at all if you a)know Wonder Woman is an Amazon and b)want to read Wonder Woman.

Besides, it's pretty public knowledge that a new writer's coming on. One very very well known and popular. I think it's fair to assume that Gail Simone's name is going to be a bigger draw for non-Wonder Woman fans than Amazons Attack would be.

And finally, guys, I'm not going to say Pfeifer wrote a good story. It's a pretty lame story. All in all, the execution was really awkward and bad.

But this is going to ruin Wonder Woman? THIS? Where white-suited, powerless, Dead-Steve, I-Ching accompanying Diana in the seventies didn't?

Where George Perez's brand new, Diana as wide-eyed newbie with no Steve at all didn't?

Where John Byrne completely uprooting her from her entire supporting cast, planting her in a new city, sending her mother back in time, messing with Donna Troy and making a brand new really annoying (she got better) Wonder Girl didn't?

Where Allan Heinburg's once-every-three-or-so month schedule didn't?

Where Jodi Picoult's complete ignorance of the character and what makes her tick didn't?

And besides, you know some of the accusations toward Pfeifer don't even make SENSE!

He "destroyed what made Diana unique"?

I'm going to guess that that means the Amazons and the Gods in that case. As they're the only really huge changes at the end of the comic...

Except. Um. The Amazons had been completely gone since Infinite Crisis. For about a year. Pfeifer BROUGHT THEM BACK. Yes. Now they're scattered to the four winds. But they're back on Earth in this PLANE OF EXISTANCE. Which they HADN'T been before.

And if you think this is going to be permanent...if you think this isn't just clumsy set up for what amounts to a glorified sort of "Gotta catch them all!" sort of plot...you're kind of silly.

(Yes, the ignorance of the Amazon's high tech was silly, but that's pretty easy to ignore or re-retcon away. Yeesh.)

Is it that he captured the Gods? The Gods who were all AWOL between IC and now? Weren't they already written out by Greg Rucka?

Now they're back and captured. Okay. By a villain. Okay.

Hey, guys? You remember the whole SUPERHERO concept? The whole righting wrongs and defeating bad guys and RESCUING PEOPLE thing?

Yeah. It's not like Diana actually serves the Gods and would want to see them rescued or anything...

It can't be Hippolyta. She was stone cold dead after Our Worlds at War. Okay, she's alone, crazy and possessed/tainted or something like that.

But remember, the alternative is DEAD.

And may I return to the whole superhero concept for a second? It's not like heroes ever find cures or manage to fix supernaturally induced possession or craziness...right?

So yeah, Pfeifer didn't get rid of the Amazons, Gods, or Polly. They were already gone. He BROUGHT THEM BACK. And gave them remarkably FIXABLE problems.

And honestly, for the record, I really don't think the Amazons, Gods or Hippolyta is remotely what makes Diana unique or interesting. They're good story elements, sure. And I do adore Hippolyta, sure. But ya know...they really didn't play THAT big of a role in the TV show. And I don't think anyone's going to argue that Lynda Carter wasn't the quintessential Wonder Woman.

And if you DO think that Lynda Carter wasn't the quintessential Wonder Woman, you need to go away now. Just saying. :-P

Anyway, I understand hating Amazons Attack because it's a poorly written story. Or thinking the new developments are stupid and that Simone's going to need to do some serious work fixing things back to as they should be. Or, you know, being seriously ticked that Diana was essentially a bit part in her own damn story.

But outright raving hysteria? "Pfeifer killed Wonder Woman"?! "Pfeifer ruined all that was good about Wonder Woman"?! You're smarter than that. Chill. Yeesh.

16 Comments:

But Kali, how could I react to a comic storyline I disliked without gross overexaggeration and a great wailing and knashing of teeth? My Gods, I might be forced to use logic and common sense, and everyone knows they has no place on the internet.

I didn't like the AA storyline. I bought the first issue, and promptly took both it and WW off my pull list. It was *awful* in a way I've not seen for years. I can see the setup for future storylines and tie-ins to other stuff, and I understand how it can be retconned into a more palatable history, but the sheer awfulness of the event has made me less willing to pick up the book. If it were anyone other than Gail Simone (or perhaps one of a handful of writers I trust) writing WW from now on, I wouldn't be buying it at all. It won't ruin her. It's not even lasting damage. A year or two from now, I expect it will be mostly forgotten, swept under the rug. But my immediate reaction is still wariness in touching anything to do with her franchise. And I'm a little upset about that.

I think I might be the only person who actually kinda liked the series, but I don't get the raving hysterical denunciation that the Intarweb hive-mind has seemingly declared the only acceptable reaction to this (or indeed just about anything else DC does or talks about doing or thinks about doing, it seems.)

Now they're back and captured. Okay. By a villain. Okay.

Right - and I can see maybe thinking it's wrong and unrealistic for the gods to be tricked and captured. That's just crazy talk, unless, y'know, maybe it was another god what did it? A "new" god, perhaps?

I've had a few comments after linking to the ending of AA. A book I avoided like the plague, since I cynically felt it would be pretty stupid before it ever came out. But ignoring that for now. All of those comments have been negative. All from people who didn't buy the series or buy the ongoing...

AHA! you might say. They wouldn't have bought it anyways, since what happens in AA doesn't really matter. Except my point would be that if the cross-over had BEEN GOOD it might have ATTRACTED some of those non-buyers into BEING BUYERS. These events are supposed to help sales not drive off potential fans and turn off even SOME portion of the exsisting ones. No, as I've said elsewhere this won't KILL the character. But its sure as hell not going to help it. And that is what these events SHOULD DO. Thats their ENTIRE reason to exsist. TO PUSH SALES. And this? This was full of fail in that sense. It DRAGGED down the sales of books it crossed over with...

So yes, Panic & Doom-crying about how Wonder Woman is destroyed forever and its all ruined is an over-reaction. But being dissapointed in the whole thing? Thinking it damages the market for Wonder Woman? I think thats a pretty reasonable thought...

You have a point of course. I AM glad that Hyppolita is back, and being slightly crazed is certainly better than being dead.

What really confuses the heck out of me, isn't that the real Greek Pantheon has been captured, because I actually rather like that concept, but the apparent fact that it was Granny Goodness who did it. I wasn't aware that she had that sort of moxie!

So I suppose that she's trying to recruit new Female Furies? Have all the old ones been killed off already? If that is indeed her purpose, why banish all the Amazons, who it would seem would make just dandy Furies?

Granny Goodness' plot is certainly rather opaque... I thought her little speech as Athena actually was pretty astute, and if the Amazons are that easily pushed into barbarism, why *wouldn't* they make a jim-dandy ready-made power base for Granny on Earth?

Like Kalinara, I think I ended up liking the *idea* of Amazons Attack more than the story itself. I would've liked to see something both a little more micro and macro at the same time, maybe dealing with the clash of two martial traditions, maybe something like a battle between amazons and an MP company led by a tough American fighting woman like Leigh Ann Hester:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Ann_Hester

I suppose I would've wanted something more like an actual "war" story, less of Nemesis (or faux-Nemesis, as he bears little resemblance to the character from Brave and Bold and Suicide Squad to me) getting attacked by bees.

The fact that someone will unshit the bed in the future does not undo the fact that the current WW setup is fecal. Which wouldn't be depressing (as you pointed out, the times that WW has been treated well over the last 15-20 years are more than the ones where she's been treated well), if a writer who many were hoping would write a strong Diana wasn't coming on board.

Sure, the various hidden Amazons can be rounded up. That doesn't change the fact that they are a bunch of child-murdering and _stupid_ women. Frankly, Diana'd be doing the world a favor to leave them where they are. And even that doesn't help the fact that Diana is now the representative not of a wise and compassionate society, but of a bunch of savages who are far *worse* than the society she is coming to.

As I put it in Pfiefers blog:

"it's possible to write good stories about a refugee from a savage society of warmongering child-murderers overcoming her self-hatred and surviving the fact that she's despised. But a lot of people were hoping to see stories about *Wonder Woman*, for once."

Universal Person: True, but I ought to point out that should these developments be expanded on, it'll be likely by either Gail Simone on Wonder Woman or Grant Morrison on Final Crisis.

Tavella:

Personally, I think this all smacks of a fairly standard "villain sets up the hero to look bad" plot. Kind of stupid, sure. But still really easy to fix (without a retcon). The Amazons could easily be unconsciously affected by Granny Goodness (or some other cause relating to a future plot), especially as she's strong enough now to imprison gods.

Most likely, going by comic book storytelling trends, Diana and her allies (whomever they may be at the time) will end up defeating the bad guy, clearing the Amazons name and then she'll be back to Ambassador or moved onto other plots.

Comic books are both the most fluid and most static medium I can think of. We can be fairly certain, no matter what happens, that it will ultimately smooth itself back into some form of the status quo.

Personally I wouldn't be surprised, as I'm sure I'd said somewhere, if Pfeifer wasn't asked specifically to make the events happen in order to facilitate some future plan of either Simone or Morrison.

Both have more than enough clout to ask such a thing, after all.

Personally, I just think it's way too soon to freak out about until we see where it's going. Healthy pessimism/skepticism's fine, but hysteria is just silly.